Read 1 Corinthians 13.

Divine Love never fails. Divine Love solves every problem. Statements like these appear again and again in metaphysical books, and, of course, they are perfectly true; certain it is that many people firmly believe them, and yet have obviously been unable to prove them in demonstration. Why is this?

The explanation is that, consciously or unconsciously, people think of Love as some sort of Power outside of themselves; and they expect that presently, if they beg hard enough, this Power will come down and rescue them. There is, in fact, no such outside power, and therefore you cannot receive help in that way. The only place where Love can exist, as far as you are concerned, is in your own heart. Any love that is not in your heart does not exist for you.

The thing for you to do, then, is to fill your own heart with Love, by thinking it, feeling it, and expressing it; and when this sense of Love is vivid enough it will heal you and solve your problems, and it will enable you to heal others too. That is the Law of Being and none of us can change it.

Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love … (Jeremiah 31:3).

The old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is just as true in the spiritual life as it is in the material world. A great many people wait to make their contact with God until a serious difficulty is upon them and then they hasten to find a spiritual solution. Of course, it is better to seek God under such circumstances than never to find Him at all. But why wait for trouble? Many a difficulty could be prevented or lightened if we were to make our contact with God now.

The Bible says now is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time.

If you will put your life in God’s hands now through daily prayer and meditation and complete willingness to do His will, you will find that your problems will grow less as time goes on, and you will have acquired that serenity and poise that only God can give. Then, come what may, nothing shall disturb you.

And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee (Psalm 39:7).

As children of the Most High we have a divine heritage and therefore a right to expect that God will take care of us in every way. The Bible is full of promises as to what God will do for His children, but perhaps Jesus put it the most plainly when he said,

What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (Matthew 7:9-11).

So you have a divine right to expect all these good things from God. But what does God expect of us? Well, God has a right to expect that we will put Him first in our hearts. Then God expects us to have a lively faith. Faith in itself is a reliance upon the goodness of God.

And lastly, God expects us to go to Him in prayer—as a son who knows that even before he has asked, the loving Father has answered.

Most hotel rooms are furnished with a notice that says “do not disturb.” The guest has only to hang this outside the door and he can sleep in peace as long as he wishes. Some people appear to have hung such a notice on their brains; they deeply resent anything like a new idea, or even a new and better way of considering familiar things. They are slumbering away their lives in a kind of semi-coma; repeating mechanically the time-worn phrases and threadbare ideas of the past. Not dead, but sleepeth, might very well be said of them, and, indeed, their consciousness is a mental cemetery.

If you have been sleeping like this, pull yourself together, rub the mental sleep from your eyes. Now is the day of salvation. Start right in today to handle at least one important part of your life in a new way. Break at least one rusty fetter today, and once this process begins you will be astonished to find how far you will go, and what wonderful things you will attain to.

Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light (Ephesians 5:14).

The world is not going to the dogs. The human race is not doomed. Civilization is not going to crash. The captain is on the bridge. Humanity is going through a difficult time, but humanity has gone through difficulties many times before in its long history, and has always come through, strengthened and purified.

Do not worry yourself about the universe collapsing. It is not going to collapse, and anyway that question is none of your business. The captain is on the bridge. If the survival of humanity depended upon you or me, it would be a poor lookout for the Great Enterprise, would it not?

The captain is on the bridge. God is still in business. All that you have to do is to realize the Presence of God where trouble seems to be, to do your nearest duty to the very best of your ability; and to keep an even mind until the storm is over.

Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them (Psalm 119:165).

Shallow thinkers sometimes say doggedly and pessimistically, “Human nature never changes,” or, “You can’t change human nature.” The truth is that there is no need for human nature to change. The nature of man is such that he can bring an unlimited quantity of good into his life. That is his nature, and no better arrangement could be imagined.

Human nature is such that man can turn to God anywhere at any time, and by believing in His care and protection, and thinking in accordance with this belief, fill his heart with peace and poise, rebuild his body into health and strength, and surround himself with harmonious and joyous conditions.

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

Don’t be a grave robber. Let corpses alone. In due course nature disposes of such remains, if they are left undisturbed. Every time you dig up an old grievance or an old mistake by rehearsing it in your mind or, still worse, by telling someone else about it, you are simply ripping open a grave—and you know what you may expect to find.

Live the present. Prepare intelligently for the future—and let the past alone. This is what Jesus meant when he said,… let the dead bury their dead (Matthew 8:22).

Make a law for yourself today that you are not going to touch mentally any negative thing that has happened up to the present moment—and keep that law. Life is too precious for grave robbing. The past is past—liquidate it. If a negative memory comes into your mind, cremate it with the right thought (the fire of Love) and forget it.

As long as we insist upon telling God His business, nothing very much can come of our prayers.

The ox, the mule, the donkey, will obediently pull your plow and your cart, and take them where you want to go; but you have to know where that is, and how to get there. The unicorn will not do chores. He will not pull a cart or turn a mill. He will not take orders. The unicorn knows where he is going, and it is always somewhere that you could not choose because you never heard of it; and in your present consciousness you could not even dream that such a place could exist.

Nevertheless, there are such places, and the unicom knows them, and is not interested in anything less. Some day it may happen, probably when you least expect it, that the unicorn will suddenly appear at your side, eyes flashing, nostrils quivering, pawing the ground with impatience. When that happens, do not try to put a bridle on him, or to look for some task for him to do. He will not do it, and there will not be time. No sooner, seemingly, has he appeared than off he will go again. So do not pause, but leap upon his back, for he is a flying steed, and he wings his way to the gates of the morning.

On that ride problems are not solved—they disappear.

Will the unicom be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicom with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? (Job 39:9-10).

FEAR

The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the beginning of knowledge. This has misled many people, because the truth is that fear is entirely evil and is indeed the only enemy we have. You can heal any condition if you can get rid of the fear attaching to it. Trouble or sickness is nothing but subconscious fear outpictured in our surroundings. It is true at all times that “we have nothing to fear but fear.”

How then do we account for the texts quoted? The answer is that in the Bible the fear of God means reverence for God, not fear in the usual sense of the word. Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom. How do we show reverence for God? By seeing God everywhere, refusing to recognize anything unlike Him, and by living the Christ life.

Confidence is worship. You worship whatever you trust. Are you trusting more in fear or in God? What are you worshiping? That is the test.

Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace (Job 22:21).

SALVATION

The word salvation appears more than 120 times in the Bible. It was in constant use among religious people of past generations, and while it is not so often heard today, the fact remains that it is one of the most important words in the Bible and among the least well understood.

The word salvation in the Bible means perfect health, harmony, and freedom. These things are the will of God for man—for you personally; and the Bible was written to tell us how to attain to them.

We gain salvation by seeking God and letting Him work through us.

The Lord is my light and my salvation (Psalm 27:1).

He only is my rock and my salvation (Psalm 62:2).

He hath raised up a horn of salvation for us … (Luke 1:69).

And all flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:6).

Such texts as these are typical of the Bible promises concerning salvation.

Salvation comes to a few people gently and easily, but the majority have to work out their salvation with a certain amount of “fear and trembling” for the time being. The actual way in which it comes is not really important, for come it will—when we seek it with our whole heart.

WICKED

The word wicked occurs more than three hundred times in the Bible and is one of the most important terms to be found therein. In the Bible the word wicked really means “bewitched” or “under a spell.” The Law of Being is perfect harmony, and that truth never changes, but man uses his free will to think wrongly, and thus he builds up false conditions around him, and then believes them to be real. They look real, and so he forgets that it was he himself who made them, and thus he bewitches himself, or throws himself under a kind of spell; and of course as long as he remains bewitched he has to suffer the consequences. Nevertheless, it is only illusion, or a spell, and it can be broken by turning to God.

The only way to break such a spell is to think of God. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you …? (Galatians 3:1), said Paul, when he heard that some of his students had begun to believe evil in this way. The wicked flee when no man pursueth (Proverbs 28:1).

Let us awaken from the spell under which the whole race lives, and know instead that God is all Power, infinite Intelligence, and boundless love.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him … (Isaiah 55:7).

JUDGMENT

Judgment, in the Bible, means deciding upon the truth or falsity of any thought. This process necessarily goes on in our minds all the time we are awake, and the extent to which we “judge righteous judgments” determines the character of our lives. To accept evil at its face value is to judge wrongly, and bring its natural punishment. To decline to believe in evil and to affirm the good is righteous judgment and brings the reward of happiness and harmony.

Thus The Judgment is not a great trial to take place at the end of time; it is a process that goes on every day. When Jesus said, judge not, that ye be not judged (Matthew 7:1), he meant that to condemn our brother out of hand instead of seeing the Christ within him, is to put ourselves in danger, because we are making a reality of those appearances in him, and whatever we make real we must demonstrate in our own lives.

REPENTANCE

To repent means, really, to change one’s mind concerning something. When a person realizes that a particular action, or a certain line of conduct, or perhaps the whole direction of his life, has been wrong, and honestly resolves to change his conduct, he has repented. The Bible makes true repentance an essential condition for any spiritual progress, and for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus said, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish (Luke 13:3).

Repentance does not mean grieving for past mistakes, because this is dwelling in the past, and our duty is to dwell in the present and make this moment right. Worrying over past mistakes is remorse, and remorse is a sin, for it is a refusal to accept God’s forgiveness.

John the Baptist said, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 3:2). This means that you should change your thought and know that the Presence of God is where you are.

LIFE

Jesus said that he had come that we might have life and that we might “have it more abundantly.” The Bible often uses the word life, and always with the implication that it is the greatest of all blessings. With long life will I satisfy him (Psalm 91:16). Thou wilt show me the path of life … (Psalm 16:11). Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23). Jesus says that those who follow him shall have the light of life. And the great goal of man is said all through the Bible to be eternal life.

Now what is this life of which the Bible speaks? You experience life when you feel yourself to be free and useful and joyous, and unconscious of either fear or doubt. Everyone has known such periods. Though they are much rarer than they should be, those are the times that you were alive. At other times you did not have life, in the Scriptural sense.

So when the Bible promises us long life, under certain conditions, it promises us a long period of joy and freedom. When it promises eternal life, it promises the enjoyment of these things forever, on the condition that we keep the Great Law—by seeking more knowledge of God, and putting Him first in our lives.

Healing is only the beginning. When you are completely healed of everything wrong in your life—your body, your business, difficulties in personal relationships, obvious faults in your own character—you will not have finished your work. Your real work will only be commencing.

Your real work is to show and experience the glory of God, to build the spiritual consciousness, “the house magnifical.” Conscious fear will have gone, and your whole world will be different. The physical world will be different because it will be clothed in a new glory—“the light that never was on sea or land.” Then people will be different because you will be beginning to know their real selves instead of merely the outer shell, and, of course, everyone else will notice that you are different, too.

This is not to say that healing is unimportant—it has to precede the building. Let us endeavor to get our own healing completed as soon as possible in order to help the world that is needing it so much.

Bless the Lord … who healeth all thy diseases … who crowneth thee with lovingkindness … (Psalm 103:2—4).

The body cannot resist healing. It cannot even try to resist it. It cannot, so to speak, even want to resist it, because it is not intelligent. It is important to understand this fact when praying for your own healing or that of another because otherwise, without realizing it, you are likely to enter on a mental struggle with the body to compel it to change; and, of course, such a proceeding is quite useless and also fatiguing. It is your sincere belief about your body that has to be changed—changed from false belief to the Truth.

Then … thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee … (Isaiah 58:8).

I know when people pass by me in a line who it is that wants advice. They have to tell me their story in a minute; I have to get their story straight and they have to come to the point. As a rule they don’t. They usually say instead, “I am not going to take up your time. I know a public man doesn’t have much time. I thought if I could just talk to you and tell you what is in my mind …” But why don’t they do it? Because they are worried so that they cannot say what is on their mind. If I may seem impatient, do forgive me. I know if you have a problem it will be difficult for you to come to a point. If you could, it would not be much of a problem. But this I can say to you: In my work I have every sort of person coming to me for advice and help. I have been doing this work now for many years, and there is not any kind of person who has not told me everything about himself. I have never found a case that couldn’t be changed and put right if the patient would cooperate.

One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts (Psalm 145:4).

The only subject that matters is getting an understanding of Truth, developing our souls; but in order to develop our souls we must have some knowledge of the power of concentration. If you can learn and practice right concentration, there is no good thing in the universe that you cannot attain. Concentration means literally “bringing to a common center.” Until you can put your attention where you want it you have not become master of yourself. You will never be happy until you can determine what you are going to think about for the next hour.

First, make your body comfortable, then tell it to be good until you come back for it. Concentration has nothing to do with the muscles, it has nothing to do with the blood vessels. Concentration means thought control. It is purely a mental thing and if you are rightly concentrating you will find that you are actually relaxed.

People imagine that concentration means holding on to one thought. The human mind is so constituted that it is impossible to do that. True concentration is a movement of the mind along a predetermined path. Nineteen people out of twenty people who say they have failed in concentration have been trying to stand still mentally. All people do have good powers of concentration, but not when they want them. You always concentrate on what you are interested in.

I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me (Philippians 4:13).

I do not give exercises to develop concentration. Concentrate on what you are doing at any time, that is the best exercise I know.

I remember when I was a boy about twelve years old somebody gave me a perfect peach of a jackknife. It probably weighed a quarter of a pound and there was a little saw in it, a little screwdriver, a corkscrew, a thing for getting stones out of horses’ hoofs, and several blades. I carried it for about a year thinking how handy it would be for certain cases that never came up, but it never lost its interest. I could always find, when I was bored, new interest when I took out the jack-knife. If you make your search for God your jackknife in that sense, you will get your concentration and you will get your success.

Thus will I bless thee while I live … and meditate on thee in the night watches (Psalm 63:4, 6).

If you seem to yourself to be lacking in certain necessary qualities, seek that aspect of God which will meet your lack. If you seem to lack strength, ask God to give you what you need. Remember you can build any quality into your mentality by meditating upon that quality every day. You have created your limited self by thinking and you can destroy it at any moment by thinking a new pattern.

Why do we not change from day to day, and week to week, from glory to glory, until our friends can scarcely recognize us for the same man or woman? Why should we not march around the world looking like gods, and feeling it; healing instantaneously all who come to us; reforming the sinner; setting captives free?

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound (Isaiah 61:1).

The Bible is the most Precious possession of the human race. It shows us how to live. It meets everyone on his own level and brings him to God. Nevertheless, its real value lies in our interpretation of it.

Hear a Parable: A remote island was inhabited by highly intelligent savages. They had some primitive art and made excellent drawings of animals on the walls of caves. A box was washed ashore containing a number of books, dry and in good condition. The natives were delighted and pored over these pages admiring the odd shapes and patterns made by the letterpress—totally unaware of the real meanings behind it all; unaware of the very existence of Falstaff, or Portia, or Hamlet; of Huckleberry Finn, and of the other characters who lived in the books.

If you have been reading the Bible without the spiritual interpretation you are in just that position.

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures (Matthew 22:29).

Are you double-minded? Jesus says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, and that such a person need expect nothing from the Great Law.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord (James 1:5-7).

This is very obvious common sense. If you affirm one thing now, and the opposite in half an hour; if you meditate helpfully and then go downstairs to talk trouble; it is entirely natural that you should fail to influence people with the peace that comes with prayer.

If you stepped into a taxi at Grand Central and told the driver to take you to Central Park, and then, after a block, told him to drive you to the Battery, and then after a couple of blocks asked him to go to Central Park again, you could hardly expect the driver to land you at any destination. And yet this is what a good many of us do in practice. We affirm both harmony and disharmony until the subconscious mind is completely muddled, and, of course, our lives are in confusion.

Where our words and deeds reinforce one another the effect is powerful and the result certain. Where they are not in accord they cancel out, leaving us where we started, or more likely worse off.

We do not make our spiritual unfoldment in a steady straight line. Human nature does not work in that way. No one moves upward in a path of unbroken progress to the attainment of perfection. What happens is that we move forward steadily for a while, and then we have a little setback. Then we move forward again, and presently we may have another setback. These setbacks are not important as long as the general movement of our lives is forward.

The tide flows in and out. The foremost wave comes in and in, and it seems as though it would never stop until it reached high-water mark—but it does stop, and actually goes back, and if one did not know better he would suppose that that was the end of the matter. But it is not. The tide goes back a little, but not to its old mark, and then it comes on again and this time it makes a higher mark. This mode of progression seems to be general throughout nature.

Do not watch the individual waves but keep your attention on the tide, and all will be well.

Then he said unto them, Go your way … for the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

Many people think they would like to be what is called dynamic but it does not appear that they always have a very clear idea of what that expression really means. Aggressive and noisy? Bombastic, in manner?

A dynamic person is one who really makes a difference in the world; who does something that changes things or people. The magnitude of the work done may not be great, but the world is different because that person has lived and worked. The real secret of a dynamic personality is to believe that God works through you, whatever you may be doing; to-put His service first, and to be as sincere, practical, and efficient as you know how.

… know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind … (1 Chronicles 28:9).

The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now. Do a fair day’s work, and then stop. Overwork is not productive in the long run.

A friend of mine was visiting a great cathedral in Italy. Just inside the door was a magnificent mosaic extending the width of the building, but not yet completed. It represented the Last Judgment and the number of tiny pieces of different colored marble involved in it staggers the imagination. A man was on his knees working away and my friend, who spoke Italian, whispered to him, “What a stupendous task you have! I could not even dream of undertaking so much work.”

The man replied quietly, “Oh, I know about how much I can do comfortably in one day. So each morning I mark out a certain area, and I don’t bother my head thinking outside of that space. Before I know where I am the job will be complete.”

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself… (Matthew 6:34).

In the old fairy tales we were often told that when a little prince was born the fairies came to the christening with gifts. One is tempted to ask what gifts we would choose for ourselves if we had the ordering of such matters. What are the three best gifts that a child could be born with?

I suggest the following three: a good constitution, a good disposition, and horse sense. I think that a child endowed with these three qualities would have very few difficulties to meet in life.

I put a good constitution first because health is the greatest of all human blessings. On the other hand, people do not always realize how much difference a good disposition makes in oiling the wheels of everyday life. Finally, plain sense. I believe that horse sense, as it is called, is more important than the possession of any kind of mere ability or even great talents. We have all known men and women of the utmost brilliance, who apparently had every gift for success in life, but who, owing to a lack of simple, plain sense, came to shipwreck.

Now, supposing you feel that you were not endowed with one or any of these gifts, what can you do? Well, the Jesus Christ teaching tells us that no good thing for which we pray is withheld. If you want any of the above gifts for yourself, pray for it each day, by claiming it; and build it into your character by acting the part in every circumstance that arises.

… What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11:24).

The one great enemy of the human race is fear. The less fear you have, the more health and harmony you will have. The only real problem of mankind is to get rid of fear. When you really do not fear a situation it cannot hurt you. Of course, you must remember that fear often exists in the subconscious mind without your necessarily being aware of it. The great thing to remember is that fear is a bluffer. Call its bluff, and it collapses.

An amusing incident happened in Holland a number of years ago. A lion escaped from a traveling circus. Not far away a good housewife was sewing near the open window of her living room. The animal suddenly sprang in, dashed by her like a flash, rushed into the hall, and took refuge in the triangular cupboard under the staircase. The startled woman supposed it to be a donkey and, indignant at the muddy prints it left on her clean floor, pursued it into the dark closet among the brooms and pans, and proceeded to thrash it unmercifully with a broom. The animal shook with terror and the angry woman redoubled the force of her blows. Then four men arrived with guns and nets and recaptured the animal. The terrified lion gave himself up quietly, only too glad to escape from that dreadful woman.

When the woman discovered that she had been beating a lion, she fainted away.

This story illustrates perfectly the demoralizing power of fear. Our good housewife completely dominated the lion as long as she thought he was a donkey, and as long as she treated him as a donkey the lion was in abject fear of her. When she discovered her mistake, the old race fear came back and she still reacted in accordance with the race tradition.

… He that feareth is not made perfect in love (1 John 4:18).

We are all engaged in building our consciousness during every waking hour. This work is invisible, silent, and consequently overlooked by the bulk of mankind. Nevertheless, it is the most fundamental and the most far-reaching activity in life. Hour by hour, and moment by moment, we are building good or evil, failure or success, happiness or suffering into our life by the ideas that we harbor, the beliefs that we accept, the scenes and events that we rehearse in the hidden studio of the mind. This fateful edifice, upon the construction of which we are perpetually engaged, is nothing less than our self—our personality, our identity on this earth, our very life story as a human being.

That wondrous building, the spiritual consciousness, is called in the Bible the Temple of Solomon, and we are told two wonderful things about that building. It was built without any noise (and we know that thought is soundless), and it was built upon a rock.

And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building (1 Kings 6:7).

… be thou my strong rock, for a house of defense to save me (Psalm 31:2).

I once came across an old sermon that was delivered in London during the French Revolution. The author said, referring to the Sermon on the Mount: “Surely it is justifiable to hate the Arch-Butcher, Robespierre, and to execrate the Bristol murderer.” This pronouncement perfectly illustrates the fallacy that we have been considering.

You might just as well swallow a dose of prussic acid in two gulps, and think to protect yourself by saying, “This one is for Robespierre; and this one for the Bristol murderer.” You will hardly have any doubt as to who will receive the benefit of the poison.

A woman said: “I have a right to be angry,” meaning that she had been the victim of very shabby treatment. This, of course, is absurd. There is no one to give such a permit, and if general laws could be set aside in special instances, we should have, not a universe, but a chaos. If you drank a deadly poison inadvertently, you would die because such is the law. For the same reason, to entertain negative emotions is to order trouble—quite independently of any seeming justification that you may suppose yourself to have.

Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23).

A man came to see me in London in great distress. He had attended some lectures I gave, and wanted advice. He was the owner of a general grocery store in a village in the south of England, and hitherto there had been no competition. Now, one of the big chain stores was opening a branch almost opposite to him in the main street, and he was in a panic.

He said, “How can I compete with them? I am ruined.”

I said, “You know the Great Law. You know where your supply comes from. Why be afraid?”

He said, “I must do something.”

I said, “Stand in your shop each morning and bless it, by claiming that divine Power works through it for great prosperity and peace for all concerned.” He nodded his head in agreement.

I added, “Then look down the street to where they are fitting up the new store, and bless that in the same way.”

“What? Cut my own throat?” he almost screamed.

I explained that what blesses one, blesses all. I told him that he was really hating his competitor (through fear) and that his hatred would destroy him, while blessing the “enemy” was the way to get rid of hate. I finished by saying, “You cannot cut your throat with prayer; you can only improve everything.”

It took some time to persuade him, but at last he got the idea, and when I met him several years later he told me that his business had been better than ever since the chain store appeared; and that it seemed to be getting on well too.

This is what Jesus meant when he said, Love your enemies (Luke 6:27).